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July 1-31, 2015

People often ask how I get "so much done," how I have "the time and energy" and why I don't get bogged down by seeming inner and outer "obstacles." What is my secret?

This 31-day daily online "Training Your Inner Warrior " course will answer all that and more.

With a focus on training the mind to think more effectively in service to your deeper intentions, you can expect results to include personal insight, changed awareness, and "aha!" perspectives that turn into the capacity to change habits - including sustained follow through despite your best inner-trickster shenanigans! That's not hype. My last class of 40 students were "astounded" pretty much daily. I have been repeatedly told that, a year later, participants are STILL active with the change they wanted to make. Here's what a few said in our daily comment thread:

"This makes SO MUCH SENSE… Like the curtain has been pulled back to reveal the mechanism that was hidden from view before!"

"I think I could easily say that was the most important class I've ever taken. I wouldn't dream of missing a day! Every day I woke up excited that will be a new lesson for me and I couldn't wait to read it…Thank you thank you and more thank you's! Looking forward to future explorations of the brain and mind."

For many years, I have been taught through what I have come to call my “dream teachers.” I have no idea who they are, where they come from, or why they started coming to me. I have a sense they may be two masters from the orient I've run into elsewhere, but I really can't be certain. All I know is that each time they visit, my life takes a leap.

The dream with Daphne and Jack offered a catapult like no other.

This complex dream of twists and turns begins with Daphne, a high school student from the HBO series Queer As Folk. I’ll make it as quick as I can, as there’s nothing more boring than someone else’s dream.

Dream Daphne is meeting with Jack, a guy friend in a college class, catching him up on the homework assignment he missed. They are to write a Shakespearian style play.

We toss around words like "changing the world" pretty easily these days. I just added it to a blog title earlier this week. Seems like I've been saying it all my life. I recall the wise words you can love the world or want to change it, but not both. True confession: Until age 35, I never loved the world. I could not.

Even today, when girls (and boys) are stolen across the globe to fulfill men's (and women's) agendas, I want to change the world. When someone is bullied, afraid to live and wanting to die, denied every part of the spirit of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," I want to change the world. When someone is free to take out a gun and shoot anyone he wants, and when that someone wants to do so, I want to change the world. When corporations have human rights and they use those rights to create profits that poison our food supply, so that a single healthy meal is hard to find in countless neighborhoods across the US, I want to change the world.

Last night over dinner
with a friend, I realized that after years and years of working with myself and
how I relate to the world, I still have a problem.

I still don’t work well
under standard business practices, because I want to be real more than I want
to be some else’s version of a “success.” I don’t get a sense of belonging from most organized spiritual
gatherings, church or otherwise, because I have my own truth and I follow it
relentlessly. And I just can’t enjoy shooting the breeze for hours on end at neighborhood
parties, because I simply don’t know the latest news. I don’t even own a TV.

As houses go, Casa Las Artes is flat out extraordinary. A main house and a casita, it boasts six perfectly appointed bedrooms, five fireplaces, three tricked out kitchens, half a dozen cozy indoor spaces, and lots of big, luscious outdoor space.

It’s more than you need for five women, but in some ways that is the idea. I recall a song preaching “wide open spaces…room to make a big mistake” and feel this is something like that. My first visit, it has the air of timelessness and is so very much the Santa Fe I have heard of.

Tucked
away in the deepest heart of Japan, somewhere beyond city life,
probably beyond country life, resting in a humble shack on a simple
shelf in a nearly bare room, you can find a really powerful idea about
beauty. This idea, this way of life, this way of being, goes against
everything the contemporary American culture sells. It is so radical, it
goes toe–to–toe with any notion that the way things are—even when they
are falling apart—are not the way things ought to be.

The
idea is scoffed at by those who offer something more beautiful, and
bigger and better. Yet if we can find our way past the standard–issue
scoffing, hunt down this old idea, and recognize it as the pearl of
great price, we can heal these painful beauty obsessions of ours.
Really, we can.

You hear a lot about it. How you never forget. If I’m honest, I had a lot of “first loves,” and not a lot of love. What can I say? It was what you might call a rough adolescence.

As it turns out, though, one was different. I just didn’t know it.

Rob was an awesome guy, and more popular than me in high school. He was cool. He was liked. He was handsome. But he had something else going for him. While I would not have been able to name it then, today I’d say it was substance and soul.

I might have had substance and soul as well, but I was an outsider. Not as pretty as his girlfriend. Not as popular. You don’t try to compete with girls like that. You don’t even think to.

There is a story as old as
time, yet it happens every day, perhaps ever minute of every day. It's
hard to know. Such stories don't lend themselves to numbers so well.
They don't even lend themselves to telling so well, for how can a true
story ever be fully told? It is like trying to catch a fruit fly between
two fingers. Still, for the sake of all people with more courage than
they know, I'll set my fingers a grasping...

There once was a woman with more courage than she knew. As a child, she
felt this courage and expressed it proudly.

"I
will not play your violin," she told the orchestra conductor. "My
great-grandpapa made me my own fiddle. He said it was tuned just to me,
to play to the beat of my heart, and sing out my own special laughter
and my own little tears."

Say she is getting dressed—she being any woman in your life—assessing herself in the mirror.

Say she turns to you.

Already you know what is coming. Already you know you are in a lose-lose proposition.

In an instant you assess her mood, the time of day, the event she is preparing for. You contemplate answering the question to come, then not answering. You look for an exit—a non-obvious exit. With none found, you try to find a way into a joke or attempt to create a distraction.

(This is a long one… and it goes deep… so why not settle in with a cup of tea?)

Recently, a new acquaintance in yoga class asked what I “do.” Since that can be a long and variable conversation, and since we were nearly out the door, I opted to limit my response to a “quick and dirty” half-elevator speech.

“I teach about being who you are,” I said. “Who you really, really are.”

She nodded, taking it in, and asked me for my web address. When I replied “BeWhoYouAre.com,” something in the repeat hit her hard.

She took a moment, looking as if some kind of strange light bulb went off inside her head, and then asked in all earnest:

One of my friends is going through a difficult divorce and another looks like she is about to. Yet another friend is in bankruptcy while yet another looks like that’s going to be her only option. One friend just lost a son. Another is helping a community still reeling from violence against several children.

As yet one more friend often says: “Oh Holy Hell.”

With a thousand friends and a thousand possible troubles, it’s bad out there for someone pretty much any day of the week, any week of the month and any month of the year.

So as we come upon a holiday season where it so often feels wrong to be anything but merry, it seemed time to once gain put it out there that all this challenge, pain and outright heartbreak… It is not for nothing, if…

When I queried many of you as to what you most want me to write about, fear came up again and again. It was brought up in a wide range of topics, from starting a new business to leaving an old and outdated relationship. But in the end, the questions made it clear that most people who battle with fear don’t really understand its dynamics. They don’t understand the dynamics of bravery, pushing through, or knowing when a fear is real. Since I play with the fear-fire a lot in my life (it’s not exactly comfortable battling darkness in the shamanic realms, let alone launching a new business venture), I thought I’d break down what I have learned and offer it up here.

We all know the basics: Fear is a general term for an emotion that is built into our human condition. No one bypasses the churning gut, the heart palpitations, or the urge to run like hell. Fight or flight is a genius human response system that keeps us alive. On those long nights when the fire is low and the lions are on the prowl (literally or metaphorically), it keeps watch for us. Like a fierce guard dog… it’s there for us. Just. In. Case.

Fear helps to alert us to danger. It’s one of our most intuitive emotions and it moves lightning quick, before we even have a chance to evaluate the actual reality or level of danger being presented to us. A fake snake jumping toward us and a real snake being tossed by a prankster are completely different in terms of real danger, but just try to tell that to tell our glandular wisdom. Either way, we’re going to freak out a little.

Anger is not primitive on the journey of enlightenment. Jesus overthrew the tables when he got angry at the moneychangers. Buddha might have been grieving for the world at large when he left his wife and child and the life of a prince, but my guess is he was also just a wee bit angry that his family shielded him from the true nature of the world for those less fortunate throughout his entire early life.

Anger is real. It’s normal. It’s natural. And I believe it’s holy, in the right expression.

I admit it: I live a charmed life in a small town on a farm. I work for myself and love what I do. About the only real complaint I have is this 50-year-old feminine body wearing out a little faster than I’d expected.

But, like any good vehicle, I suppose repairs must be expected.

And so it was I was squeezing in a reasonably major surgery just a day after my work team was here for a long weekend and just a few days before my next 9-month of teaching would start.

It would have been so easy to get into the surgery assembly line along with all the others that parade through our hospitals every day. To not say things, or see things, that are out of the realm of “normal.” But that’s not what I’m about.

"You're Robin Rice?" the
young, dark-haired woman asked me.
We were in line, signing in for an open mike poetry reading at the local
bookstore. I'm not exactly a household name, but as I am an author,
some people know of my work. Given my own "off" mood, I was prepared to
put on a polite smile. One look into this young woman's deeply troubled
face and I knew this was not the tack to take. You don't have to be
psychic to know what that kind of face means. You only have to have been
there yourself. This woman-child was on the edge of her own life, and
looming toward a jump.

Wilhelm is my Austrian friend.
Tall and stout, with a heavy accent and infectious smile, he is one of
those people who really know how to enjoy the good things in life. From a
rowdy round of soccer (football, as he calls it) to those very
expensive restaurants that serve tiny meals on beautiful plates, he is
both my good friend and private fashion police.
“Robin,” he said while celebrating a special occasion with an especially
fine wine, “you're in the amazing business.”

I
laughed, already slightly happy from the wine, until I was struck with
the truth of his words. I am in the amazing business. So are we all.

Magic––that
amazing something that happens through us when we live by deep inner
truths and clear intention, for the good of all––is not reserved for
rare occasions, nor for only the “special” leaders, visionaries, and
changemakers. It is available to anyone...

Take
Gerry. This past summer I took a group to Ireland to explore the sacred
sites and we stayed at a B&B near Dublin for convenience. The
owner, Gerry, was hysterically funny—especially when he was True Irish
Drunk (which is to say far more lucid than I would be with that much
beer, but still swaying on his feet). He would repeat this mantra sober
or drunk: “Every day’s a school day.” And, wow, the way he said it…
total enthusiasm.

Gerry was
open to learning. Learning was his path. He didn’t seem at first blush
to be the kind of guy who really thought that way, so it was all the
more charming. Those of us who met him came to love him just for this
simple expression. He’s right; every day is a school day. But the path
of simple daily learning was what kept him happy.

I know, I know, you've heard life is a dance. Now I'm saying it isn't? And JUST when you were getting the whole "two steps forward, one step back" thing?

The
shaman in me understands and agrees. At the shamanic level, which is to
say the level of our soul story being played out in human time, life is
a dance--hopefully a beautiful, profound and compelling one. Our
stories are a series of ups and downs, back and fourths, right and lefts
that we trust is going somewhere but can sure look otherwise a whole
lot of the time. And we all know how it ends, right?

That's the soul-having-a-human-experience, and done beautifully, the dance is a whole lot of... well, everything!